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Protected areas anchor the ecological infrastructure that societies need for long-term prosperity and provide benefits to local, national, and global stakeholders. However, these areas continue to go unfunded. In this paper, we have provided the first estimate of the return on investment for nine large protected areas that compose the core of the ecological infrastructure of the State of Amapá, which is located in a new forest frontier in Brazilian Amazonia. These nine protected areas will require US $147.2 million over five years in order to be established and then US $32.7 million in annual recurrent costs. If implemented, these nine protected areas have the potential to contribute at least US $362.4 million per year in benefits (timber, non-timber forest products, nature-based tourism, fisheries, and carbon) to the local economy. The return on investment (ROI) of these protected areas will be 1.6% during the first five years and 10% thereafter; however, ROI could reach 45.8% or more if option and non-use values are also included as benefits. Although the costs of establishing the protected area system in Amapá are higher (US $3.2–3.5 ha − 1 y − 1 ) than the costs reported in other tropical forest regions (US $0.2–0.4 ha − 1 y − 1 ), the investments required are within the reach of both state and national governments. Our study shows that if fully implemented, protected areas can become engines for socio-economic upliftment, making the conservation-centered development model a feasible option for most of the world's new forest frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Brazil invested only 15.5 % of the funds required in its protected areas. • 76.5 % of Brazil's federal protected areas have funding deficits. • Funding deficits vary geographically. • Protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon are mostly underfunded. • The total annual funding deficit in Brazil's protected areas increased. Protected areas (PAs) are the most effective public policy instruments to protect natural ecosystems and the services these ecosystems provide. Nevertheless, several PAs present a funding deficit because governments allocate fewer financial resources than those required to cover PA management costs. The variation in funding deficits within countries is not well documented because information about PA public investments and management costs are seldom available. We describe the variation in funding deficits across Brazilian federal PAs and propose a model that explains such variation by using PAs' characteristics and their zones of influence as predictors. We estimated that the 282 Brazilian federal PAs needed US$ 468 million to cover their management costs in 2016. However, the Brazilian government allocated only 15.5 % of these costs. Approximately 76.5 % of the PAs had funding deficits. Our model showed that: (1) funding deficit is negatively associated with PA age and the human development index but positively associated with PA size, (2) PAs in the Atlantic Forest and the Savannas and Drylands have lower funding deficits than PAs in the Amazon, and (3) PAs in the Atlantic Forest have lower funding deficits than PAs in the Savannas and Drylands. We found that the proportion of PAs with a funding deficit in Brazil is high and is comparable to the high percentage of PAs (75 %–100 %) with a funding deficit found in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, there is evidence that the total annual funding deficit in the Brazilian PAs increased in the last decade. New policies, public-private partnerships, and innovative funding mechanisms need to be set to close the large funding gap in the Brazilian federal PA system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]